Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide - Opposition To Physician-assisted Suicide

Devaluing the Life of the Terminally Ill

In 1996 the Second and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals lifted the bans on assisted suicide in New York and Washington State, respectively, and both cases eventually went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled on them in June 1997 (Washington et al. v. Harold Glucksberg et al. and Dennis C. Vacco, Attorney General of New York et al. v. Timothy E. Quill et al.). Kathleen M. Foley, MD, co-chief of the Pain and Palliative Care Service of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, was appalled at these rulings. In "Competent Care for the Dying Instead of Physician-Assisted Suicide" (New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 336, no. 1, January 2, 1997), Dr. Foley commented that the courts' response was a dangerous form of affirmative action that ran the risk of further devaluing the lives of terminally ill patients and providing an excuse for society to end its responsibility for their care.

Dr. Foley claimed that physicians are not adequately trained to deal with the dying, much less to determine the many symptoms associated with patients' requests to die. She feared that if physician-assisted suicide were legalized, it would take the place of a variety of interventions—therapeutic, psychological, and social—that might very well improve the life of dying patients. She was also concerned that patients, especially minorities who may already be distrustful of the health care system, might not seek medical or psychological treatment for fear that physicians might hasten their deaths.

Oppression of the Disabled

As an attorney for the Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, Wesley J. Smith is a staunch defender of the sanctity of human life and an outspoken opponent of assisted suicide. In his books Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope from Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder (New York: Times Books, 1997) and Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001) Smith warns that legalized euthanasia could become a form of oppression. Citing the Jim Crow laws (1880s–1960s), which discriminated against blacks, Smith raised the concern that a person's state of health might soon become a basis for the oppression of specific groups of people. He speaks specifically of the disabled as being further oppressed if physician-assisted suicide were legalized.

Disabled people tell of incidents where the able-bodied have told them that they would rather be dead than disabled, or that if they (the able-bodied) were disabled, they would soon give up and kill themselves. Such attitudes are also reportedly found in the health care system. Further, some observers think that the financial pressures exerted by private and government payers might lead to hastening the deaths of disabled patients.